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Rangers to reportedly hire Greg Brown as associate head coach

July 12, 2018, 12:44 AM ET [104 Comments]
Jan Levine
New York Rangers Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
The Rangers have yet to fully announce their coaching staff, but Jeff Cox of the New England Hockey Journal is reporting that Boston College associate head coach Greg Brown is leaving BC to join David Quinn's staff with the Rangers. If accurate, he would be the third coach on the staff, joining holdovers Benoit Allaire and Lindy Ruff. Allaire will coach the goalies, as he has the past several seasons, but the role of Ruff, who handled the defense last season under former coach Alain Vigneault, is unclear.




The SNYRangersblog reported the following about Brown (largely taken from his bio on BC's website) :

Brown was a teammate of David Quinn's on the 1985-86 USA World Junior team.

He played at BC for three seasons in the late 80s and played 94 games in the NHL with the Sabres, Penguins and Jets (so he has NHL experience).

Brown has been with BC since 2004-05 and was promoted to associate head coach under Jerry York in 2012-13. He was at BC for all of Chris Kreider and Kevin Hayes' time there (giving him connections to current Rangers).

Brown's bio on the BC website indicates that he worked "closely with the team's defensemen and has worked extensively with special teams."

In his playing career at BC he was a two-time Hobey Baker finalist and he was a teammate of Brian Leetch at BC and both Leetch and Richter on various USA teams (tying him to former Ranger greats).

Brown was an assistant for the 2013-14 Team USA World Junior team that featured Brady Skjei, the 2016-17 and 2017-18 USA World Junior teams that featured Ryan Lindgren (more Ranger connections)


The good news is that New York has added another young, forward thinking coach/mentor who can relate well to the current crop of players; a key seeing how many inexperienced blueliners could break camp with the team and are in the pipeline. In addition, that may mean that Ruff is the eye in the sky and not behind the bench with Quinn. If there is a downside, is that the Rangers have become very Boston centric in their coaching staff and organization. GM Jeff Gorton, Quinn, Assistant GM Chris Drury, Leetch, Hayes, Kreider, Lindgren and likely a few more i haven't listed. Not that this specifically is a bad thing, but it's interesting seeing the connections and the interrelationship amongst them.

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